


i always have a sense of trembling (but so does a compass, after all)

by Stacicity



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: 5+1 fic in 2020 that's right, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Recovery, safehouse fic, unabashed tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:47:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24109966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stacicity/pseuds/Stacicity
Summary: Five things that have changed after the Lonely, and one thing that hasn't.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 29
Kudos: 238





	i always have a sense of trembling (but so does a compass, after all)

_i) pins and needles_

Martin steps out of the Lonely and it’s like stepping out of a plane into hot dry air, like jumping from snow into boiling water, his body head to toe static oscillating between numbness and agonised heat. He can’t feel Jon’s hand in his. For a moment, he thinks that this is it, this is the Lonely taking what was promised. 

He can see the dark walls of the tunnels. Before that, coils of mist writhing and dissipating into the too-hot air. Before that, Jon’s face, worried eyes, crinkles at the corner as his lips move. Martin can’t hear him beyond the rushing of blood in his ears. 

His senses drip back in increments. Sight first, and then smell, his nostrils clearing themselves of the strange smell of that foggy beach, saline and almost-sweet. Martin remembers in one of the Narnia books he’d read when he was little that at the end of the world, the furthest edge of the horizon, the water was supposed to be sweet. 

After smell comes taste, bizarrely - Jon presses a cup of tea into his hands and Martin knows that because he can see it, but his hands are still all pins, all needles and no pressure from the mug, his weight perception entirely off. He knows that he’s sitting down on one of the threadbare sofas in the breakroom because his weight is distributed that way but he can’t be entirely sure that in the next moment he might not just fall through it altogether. He lifts the mug very slowly and very carefully, and it feels weightless - when he sets it to his lips he can’t _feel_ the warm rush of tea but he can taste it, overmilked and underbrewed, and he smiles. 

Hearing comes next. Jon’s voice distorts between too-deep, too-slow, resonant like whale music, all the way up to the crackle and whine of microphone feedback, but after a few more hours the disjointed sounds condense themselves into syllables, muffled like Jon is speaking through glass, through water, and then into words. _Martin_ , he says, and Martin has to take a moment to remember that that’s him. 

They go home. Or - rather - they go to Jon’s flat. Martin lies on the sofa wrapped in a blanket he can’t feel and feels like he’s floating in thin air, not falling, not rising, held entirely motionless. It’s not an unfamiliar feeling. He’s been motionless a while, now. 

It takes until the train to Scotland for him to feel anything at all beyond crackling static fizzing in his blood. It’s a long train to Inverness and Martin watches the sun track itself across the sky, clouds racing past the window like a time lapse. There’s a weight against his shoulder. Martin turns to look and sees the top of Jon’s head, hair in disarray. There’s a strand of it tickling his nose and Martin has to look away so he won’t sneeze, scrubbing a hand across his face. His hands feel dry - wind-chapped. His lips are cracked and when he moves his lips he can feel the dry skin tugging and pulling, ready to split, to bleed, and it’s almost a relief. 

Jon sleeps against his shoulder and Martin feels that he might, perhaps, be coming back to life. 

_ii) faces_

There is a little old lady in the village called Bonnie who runs the shop and talks at length about her chickens (her wee girls) and harangues Martin into buying more vegetables when he pops down for supplies. Bonnie wears fairisle jumpers and long skirts and chunky brightly-coloured necklaces, and it takes Martin about a week to realise that he knows all of this about her, and he cannot bring up her face in his mind. 

The next time he goes down to the shop he pays attention while he pays for their groceries, watches Bonnie’s face and sees her features slide and blur like oil on water. They’re not _moving_ , but as soon as Martin shifts his focus, looks from her to the eggs or the milk, they slip out of his mind. 

Jon’s face is the same. That hurts more. Martin tries to summon up an image of him and can remember some specifics - the shape of his nose, the line of his jaw - but it’s piecemeal and fragmented, puzzle pieces that won’t quite fit together. He sits in the safehouse and rests his chin on his hands, watches Jon go through the cupboards with an apparently incessant need to know what is in each drawer and hidden space, and tries to ink his face against the blank static that still buzzes within his skull. 

_iii) presence_

“So, checking the sugar - no ants, that’s good, no clean teaspoons either because someone doesn’t know how to use a sink, but that’s alright, we’ll just rinse one off, and-”

“I was going to wash those later.” 

Martin flinches, shoulders hunched all the way up to his ears, spinning to stare at Jon who is - yes, who is there, sitting at the kitchen table. He frowns, tilts his head a little in that way that means he’s thinking, and Martin can feel the blush rising in his cheeks before he can do anything to stop it. 

“Sorry- God, sorry, Jon, I was just-”

“That’s alright.” Jon rubs his jaw, giving Martin a long look. “Did you forget I was here?” 

“No! No.” He hadn’t forgotten. It’s a little worse than that. Martin grimaces, lifts his hands like he can build some sort of explanation out of the empty air rather than rely on words. “It’s, um- I know you’re there, I’m just not used to people being able to- t-to see me, or hear me, or-”

“ _Oh_.” Jon draws in a breath and there’s a flicker of something in his face, a sort of grim and awful anger, before it fades back to concern. “Well, I- I can. See you, I mean.” 

“Right.” 

“I don’t have to. I can, er, if you want privacy, I can-”

“No!” Martin huffs out an exasperated breath, presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. “No, I _like_ having you here, I’m just not used-” he turns sharply when he hears the kettle whistling, jumping all over again.

A stovetop kettle. Apparently Daisy had stocked the cabin with as few electric things as possible because even though it had a generator out back there was always the chance that it might fail. It’s sort of charming, actually, boiling water on the hob, but right now the whistle is piercing enough that it feels like it’s blasting right through him and Martin yelps as he tries to wrestle it off the hob and only succeeds in burning himself in the process, hugging his hand to his chest. 

“Jesus, Martin,” Jon says, obviously alarmed, standing from the table as if to step towards him and then stopping when Martin shakes his head, hunched over himself, going to stick his hand under the cold tap. It’s frigid and numbing and he watches the skin on his palm go red and shiny under the flow, pins and needles all over again at the outermost edges of the pain.

“It’s fine, Jon. It’s- it’s fine.” 

_iv) fear_

The problem with losing some of the numbness of being alone is that it gives Martin all of the time in the world to process everything else that he’s been steadily pushing away. The fear, the grief, the guilt. It hits without warning. One minute he’s sitting on the sofa trying to read something, the next second the words on the pages are blurring in front of his eyes and he hears Jon’s voice like it’s coming from underwater, feels gentle fingers against his suddenly-wet cheeks. Each breath feels like something fought-for, like hail stinging his lungs, and he tries to curl up, to make himself small, hide his face in the hollow of his hands. 

It happens. They get used to it. There is a _them_ , now, to get used to it.

Jon’s hands are steady as he draws him closer and when it passes and Martin feels hollow, like he’s been scraped out and emptied, he can feel the sharp point of his chin resting on top of his head, the thin band of his arms holding him together despite the hairline fractures criss-crossing their way over every inch of him. 

_v) sleep_

Neither of them are sleeping much, these days. It’s a companionable silence, though, in the pale hour between night and dawn, Jon’s eyes open as he stares at the ceiling, Martin curled on his side.

On their first night, he placed himself between Jon and the door. Jon didn’t question it, and they haven’t discussed it. 

It takes a few nights before he feels Jon shift in the bed and turns to look at him, unwilling to speak, to break the fragile silence between them. Jon says nothing, just reaches down to slip his fingers into Martin’s, hold on tightly. It makes it easier to breathe - something on which to focus, the warmth of Jon’s skin, the little bump on his finger from holding his pen strangely for years and years, the ragged line of his nails where he’s bitten them. Little details are easier to focus on than the breathtaking enormity of feeling Jon press close and rest his head against his shoulder, the sound of his breathing settling back to a rhythm. 

Neither of them are sleeping much, these days. The nights are a haven, regardless. 

_vi) Jon_

Coming out of the Lonely is a series of tiny steps - one forward, and two back - and breaking the walls he’s so painstakingly put up comes at the cost of his comfort and his breath, forcing himself forwards. He gets used to the sound of his name in Jon’s mouth again, the recognition that he is present and tangible, that he can be seen, that when Jon reaches out to touch him he isn’t doing it blindly. He get used to reaching back. 

Small steps. Martin starts pulling two mugs at a time out of the cupboard without having to think about it too much. He stops flinching at the touch of Jon’s hand to his shoulder and leans into it instead. He starts to smile again.

The first kiss is nothing dramatic or desperate. It’s just a kiss. Brief and tender and easy, and Martin sinks into it like bathwater, like putting on a winter coat on the first cold day of the year. Everything has changed, but this, this ache, this weathervane heart of his that points unerringly to Jon - this hasn’t. 

“I really love you, you know,” he sighs, apropos of nothing when he hears footsteps at the doorway of the living room, sees Jon startle at the reminder of that day, watches his eyes flick sidelong as he notes the tense. “I- I have. I did. I _do_.” 

Jon’s smile is soft and small and precious, and Martin feels warm for the first time in months. He can feel butterflies in his tummy and the prickling heat of a blush on his cheeks, he is fully contained with his skin. Jon doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to; Martin is feeling again, and he feels the reciprocation in the brush of Jon’s thumb over his cheek and the tea he presses into his hands, the way he shivers when their fingers touch. 

“Cold hands,” he mutters, brow furrowing, and Martin smiles like himself, like the person he remembers being, once upon a time. 

“Warm heart,” he replies, and feels Jon’s laughter in his kiss. 

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't writing fic when 5+1 was popular so gosh darn I'm going to do it now 
> 
> The title is a quote from Jerzy Kosiński
> 
> [Find me on tumblr](https://ajcrawly.tumblr.com) and say hi! Comments & kudos soothe my itching soul.


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